News

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13 Jan 2012

DLA Piper Advises SurveyMonkey on complex acquisition, asset contribution and stock issuance transaction involving TPG Growth and MarketTools

Acquisition of leading software provider represents SurveyMonkey's largest transaction to date

Press Release

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DLA Piper announced today that the firm had represented SurveyMonkey, the world’s largest survey company, in the negotiation and execution of an agreement with TPG Growth, the middle market and growth equity investment platform of the global private investment firm TPG Capital, to acquire MarketTools, Inc., a leading provider of software and services for market research and enterprise feedback management (EFM).

MarketTools is a privately held market research company whose products include Zoomerang, an online survey application; ZoomPanel, an online sample provider; TrueSample, a data quality assuance technology; Research Solutions, a custom market research provider; and CustomerSat, an enterprise feedback management platform.

Under the terms of the agreement, TPG will acquire MarketTools and transfer the Zoomerang, ZoomPanel and TrueSample businesses to SurveyMonkey in exchange for a minority stake in SurveyMonkey. TPG will separately retain and expand the Research Solutions and CustomerSat businesses.

“This acquisition is a significant milestone for SurveyMonkey, and marks the company’s largest transaction to date,” said Ben Griebe, a partner in DLA Piper’s Silicon Valley office, who advised SurveyMonkey on the transaction. “We are proud to have the opportunity to bring DLA Piper’s extensive and global capabilities to support and advise SurveyMonkey in this transaction.”

In 2011, DLA Piper was ranked a leader in M&A deal volume by Mergermarket and in Private Equity and Venture Capital deal volume by Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst.

The Zoomerang online survey business will add approximately 1.7 million users to SurveyMonkey’s user base, which currently has over 9 million registered users. ZoomPanel will dramatically expand SurveyMonkey’s current panel offering, enabling customers to easily extend the reach of their surveys with access to more than 2.5 million high-quality respondents worldwide.

DLA Piper attorneys Ben Griebe, a partner in the firm’s Silicon Valley office, led the DLA Piper team that included: Brad Gersich, Chung Wei, Jennifer Lee and Victoria Lee, from the firm’s Silicon Valley office; and Jennifer Kashatus, from the firm’s Washington, D.C. office and Nancy Kawano from the firm’s San Diego office.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction closed in January.